Industrial fiber materials often require means to hold or bind materials together. Often, thermoplastic materials (e.g., fibers) are used to stitch or bind the materials together. However, such current methods include a number of drawbacks including but not limited to the incompatibility of typical thermoplastics with secondary materials (in particular epoxy-based composite materials), lack of sufficient blending, yarn showing through composite surfaces, behavior of thermoplastics upon sanding or cutting of secondary materials, rigidity of typical thermoplastics and lack of reformability of typical thermoplastics.
Thermoplastic polymers having at least one epoxide group have been described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,115,075; 4,438,254; 6,011,111; and WO 98/14498 (see e.g., pages 3-8) along with illustrative synthesis conditions, all incorporated by reference herein (see also U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,317,471 and 4,647,648, also incorporated by reference herein). Examples of such materials also can be found, without limitation at paragraphs 15-25 of Published U.S. Patent Application No. 20070270515 (Chmielewski et al), incorporated by reference for all purposes.
The use of such thermoplastic polymers in a composite material has been disclosed in WIPO Patent Application WO/2008/010823 (addressing in situ reaction of an epoxy and an amine after impregnation), incorporated by reference herein.
There is thus a need for materials that have certain thermoplastic capabilities in that they can be formed as fibrous materials for weaving or stitching or forming webs/meshes and yet avoid the issues identified above.